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Society
cannot hear what men do not say.
Men can't say what we don't feel,
and we can't get in touch with our feelings
until we raise our awareness of an issue.

Warren Farrell, Ph.D.-
The Myth of Male Power, 1993

They are coming back in droves, those who were circumcised,
wishing to be uncircumcised. Many are intelligent individuals who cannot understand this
early assault. They are challenging our primitive habits, to elevate us out of the
ignorance of the past.

Anthony Orlandella,
M.D.Letter to NOHARMM
14 March 1993

Institutionalized child abuse like circumcision, which in this
country legitimizes the sexual mutilation of about 60% of male infants, is in my opinion,
one of the primary causes of unconscious male rage and violence.

I believe no man would allow his beloved son to be circumcised if he were in touch
with the terror he experienced
during his own.

It amazes me that I could so
completely repress such an intense experience. I'm even more amazed at my fellow men,
aware that most of them are circumcised and unaware of the powerful trauma repressed in
their psyches. A way out of the unconscious avenging of repressed trauma is to make fully
conscious the denied and repressed emotion and to hold the perpetrator(s) accountable.

It no longer provides a mark of (tribal or social) allegiance
because it has been carried out on males from so many cultures and societies. If it 'makes
a boy feel regular' to be mutilated in this way, then we are back to the primitive
condition of tribal scarring that we now find abhorrent.

My first major loss was being severed forever from a sensitive
part of my boy's body - my foreskin. This mutilation is an initiation into the warrior
cult, which predates its medical and religious meanings and begins the wounding of our
boys into manhood. We would benefit from better ways to treat our boys.

All of the western world raises its children uncircumcised and it
seems logical that, with the extent of health knowledge in those countries, such a
practice must be safe.

C. Everett Koop, M.D.Former Surgeon General of the United States
Saturday Evening Post, July 1982

Risks of newborn circumcision are underreported and ignored
factors in this argument. Often a poor surgical result is not recognized until years after
the event. Adverse long-term consequences of infant circumcision on the sexual health of
American men must be recognized by physicians, parents and legislators.

Men who say, 'I'm circumcised and just fine' are either unaware as
to how circumcision diminishes the penis or in denial to block feelings of hopelessness.
Foreskin restoration offers men one means by which to regain authority over their body.

When we commit violence against an infant girl, we call it child
abuse; against an infant boy, we call it circumcision. What is the long-term impact?
Unstudied. This ignorance persists despite the fact that a nationwide study on the
long-term impact of male circumcision could be conducted for less than it cost us to
conduct any two minutes of the Persian Gulf War. Females produce smegma under their
clitoral hood identical to males. As a result, odor and infection can occur if it is not
cleaned. But we do not circumcise the female's clitoral hood. America's reflexive
continuation of circumcision-without-research reflects the continuation of our tradition
to desensitize boys to feelings of pain, to prepare them to not question the disposability
of their bodies any more than they would question the disposability of their foreskins.

The same type of cultural astigmatism which prevented past generations from
perceiving their actions as child abuse prevents contemporary Americans from perceiving or
acknowledging the most widespread form of child abuse in society today; child mutilation
through routine neonatal circumcision of males.

Historians of the future will find it incredible that we mutilated
babies by cutting off the end of their penises in the name of medicine. There are now
serious concerns that this may actually deprive adult men of a vital part of their sexual
sensitivity.

Dean Edell, M.D. - Radio and Television
Medical Advisor

Justification of
circumcision in order to save a boy later locker room embarrassment seems unrealistic.
This is the latter half of the 20th Century, a time supposedly to celebrate individuality
and freedom of choice.

Their penises are taken to the blade of a knife and cut. This is done to the male
child prior to the age of consent. The fact that we do not know the long-term impact of
this surgery and have not asked to know tells us about our attitude toward males.

The cultural task of turning a boy into a man begins by the
disruption of the primal bond between mother and her son. The implicit message given to
the male when he is circumcised, whether the ritual is performed at seven days old or at
puberty, is that your body henceforth belongs to the tribe and not merely yourself. What
indelible message would be carved on your body, encoded within the scar tissue of your
symbolic wound? That men and women who supposedly love their sons refuse to examine and
stop this barbaric practice strongly suggests that something powerfully strange is going
on that is obscured by a conspiracy of silence.

Could the trauma from this event have anything to do with our
later feelings of shame about our bodies, our concern about the size of our penises, our
anguish over sexual performance, our frozen feelings, or the male ability (liability?) to
ignore pain? In order to begin healing our wounds we need to remember what happened to us
and to name it correctly. Cutting the genitals of newborn male babies is child sexual
abuse. I encourage all men to join in ending this practice.

No one is aware of the deep implications and life-long effect (of
circumcision). All that takes place in the first days of life on the emotional level
shapes the pattern of all future reactions. How could a being aggressed in this way, while
totally helpless, develop into a relaxed, trusting person?

Dr. Frederick Leboyer
Birth Without Violence, 1975

No male on this
earth begins life without a covered penis, but then rituals and ignorance take over and
many lose their foreskins. Wouldn't it be more meaningful for each male to decide his own
fate as an adult?

When
a child is subjected to intolerable, overwhelming pain, it conceptualizes mother as both
participatory and responsible regardless of mother's intent. The perception of the infant
of her culpability and willingness to have him harmed is indelibly emplaced. The
consequences for impaired bonding are significant.

Rima Laibow, M.D. - Circumcision and its Relationship
to Attachment Impairment
Syllabus of Abstracts Second International Symposium on Circumcision, April 30, 1991

It is not easy to see
evil in something that has the sanction of long tradition, but traditions can be bad or
good. The represent inherited error as well as inherited truth.

Archbishop Lang - United Kingdom

Isn't
it insulting to the average male's intelligence to think that surgery is preferable
because he can't be trusted with washing his genitals when somehow he manages to brush his
teeth, clean his ears and blow his nose?